Game Description: In a first for the franchise, Resident Evil 6 sees series favorites Leon and Chris come together to face this unprecedented threat. They will be joined by new characters, each with their own unique perspective and involvement, in this relentless dramatic horror experience enacted on a global scale.

At E3 2012 this week, Capcom revealed Resident Evil 6’s interesting new take on co-op gameplay. Dubbed “crossover,” RE 6 allows gamers to let other players into their individual (or dual) campaign, but only at choice moments in the plotline. The idea is to allows story and gameplay to intersect.

There are three characters and three separate campaigns, and each character will have their own partners in a similar fashion to previous games, but at different points in each individual campaign, the characters’ paths will cross.

At these plot-points, you can choose to share your game with others, either strangers or friends, and for that level/boss battle, you’re playing four-player co-op. It’s an intriguing idea from a story-telling and gameplay point of view. Since the other characters aren’t part of “your” story, it makes sense that they are controlled by strangers, and might act differently than you’d expect.

If you don’t like other people, or you’d rather not wait until some other gamer gets to the right time in his or her story, you have the option of playing with AI controlled characters instead.

In the section demoed at E3 by producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, Leon and Sherry met up with Jake and Helena, for a showdown with a new boss called Ustanak. Ustanak is some sort of monster-robot combination who wears cages on his body to capture his prey. Not a fun guy at all. It is a frantic battle, with characters being taken captive by the beast, and comrades being forced to free them.

As the creature was being worn down with bullets, the groups got separated and mixed up, with Leon and Jake switching partners, forcing even more interconnections with other players. One team was stuck battling the boss while the other worked to repair an old bus in order to smash through a barrier and kill the beast.

The possibilities are endless for this intriguing mechanic, especially given the different tones and styles of each of the game’s campaign modes. Speaking of Resident Evi 6’s single player stories, check out our preview of Chris Redfield and Leon Kennedy’s stories.